Pier 7

For decades, the waterfront’s oldest structure languished as a parking lot, then burned in 1973, leaving ruins. When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake wrecked the Embarcadero Freeway that had severed the city from its bay, planners seized their chance. The rebuilt Pier 7, dedicated in 1990, cost six agencies and $6.5 million to resurrect, a Victorian-styled phoenix rising from asphalt and earthquake debris. The original 1901 pier once welcomed passenger vessels; today’s version welcomes anglers casting lines into 35-foot-deep water, the second-longest fishing pier in the city.

The freeway that made the rebuild possible took two more years to come down after the earthquake that condemned it, a slow argument between people who wanted their on-ramp back and people who wanted their waterfront back. The waterfront side won, and Pier 7 became one of the first pieces of evidence for what a city could look like without a double-decker highway blocking the view of its own bay. No ships dock there anymore. Anglers stand where the ticket counters used to be, waiting on flounder and leopard shark in water deep enough to have once floated ocean liners.